Reclaimed – Chapter 12

Owari is surrounded by a stone wall ten meters tall. From the road past the guard station, I can glimpse the top of a five-story pagoda in the middle of town and roads leading away from the entrance in a grid, but that’s it. All the other buildings in the city must only be a story or two tall. A gigantic wooden gate swings open as we approach, and a team of ten people, men and women, wait for us beyond the threshold.

I hand off Kagemusha’s reins, bend my aching legs, and stride forward to meet them. The time has come for me to put on my game face, to command as much of my royal blood as possible and persuade these people to let me in. The man in front, though, angles past me to Sakai and Jiro, as if I’m nothing but a nuisance. I must look even younger now with the short hair.

“Hello.” I tip forward in a slight bow, and the man rolls his eyes, glancing down at me.

Remember, Sanaa, you’re in command.

“What can I help you with, child?” Condescension coats every syllable as he scans me from head to toe. “We don’t allow girls to wear swords in this city. Please give that back to your father.” He waves at Sakai, directing his chin in his direction. “Are you in charge here?”

“Excuse me,” I say again, trying my hardest to be polite and unlock my jaw already stiff with anger. My chest burns, annoyance warring with hatred in a battle to the death. “I am in charge here. Please do not refer to me as a child. These men and women are in my employ. Now,” I clear my throat and smile, “I am here to see Rai Oda. Will you please let him know that Sanaa Itami wishes to meet with him?”

He bursts into a laugh and the other men and women behind him smile, nudging each other with their elbows. “Arata Sasaki, is that you behind these people? Are you playing a practical joke on us?”

Arata shifts in his saddle and glances at the men at the gate then me. He swallows a few times and I cringe. I have completely embarrassed him again. Will we be turned away today?

No. I want this. I want Rai Oda and his family, and I want the chip, more than anything I have ever wanted before. More than Jiro even. Well, maybe not more than Jiro. I could live without the chip, and it’s doubtful I could live without him.

“Come, Sanaa,” Jiro calls as I glance at him. “Let’s go. These people are stubborn and will never listen to reason.” He stares directly at me as he pushes his hair back and tugs on his right ear. Bluff.

“Fine. I will take my technology and starships elsewhere.” I bow to the man at the gate as he freezes. “Perhaps the Koga are better allies to have. Shiro Koga expressed an interest only a few days ago.” I turn on my heel and walk back to my horse, grabbing Kagemusha’s reins, and settling my right foot in the stirrup.

“Hold on now,” the man says, coming forward with both hands out. He scans me again, my hands on the saddle prepared to pull myself up. “Something’s not right about your accent. Where are you from?”

I laugh and launch up onto the saddle. Kagemusha turns and tries to nip at the man which makes everyone else with me laugh. Kumo sits by my horse’s side and growls.

“You’ve finally asked the right question, but I’m not going to answer unless you let us in.”

He swallows and his forehead beads in sweat, so I sit higher in the saddle.

“Let’s just say we’re not from around here. I hear Rai Oda is a smart man. He would do best not to turn us away.”

The guard shifts on his feet before jerking his chin. “Sasaki, is she telling the truth?”

I scoff and cluck my tongue, turning Kagemusha around. “I’m insulted I have to practically beg to come into your city.”

“She’s telling the truth. If you turn her away, she won’t come back.”

I urge Kagemusha into a walk.

“Wait! Wait!” the guard shouts, running up to me. I halt Kagemusha and peer down the length of my nose at him. “I apologize. Please, follow us in.”

He turns and waves us in behind him through the gate. Jiro smiles at me, and I mouth ‘thank you’ to him. He places his hand over his heart and nods in return.

Riding through the streets of Owari, my heart beats hard in my chest. Everything here reminds me of Nishikyō and Old Japan before the wars. The buildings are built in the old style just like in Yamato, Izumo, or Takayama, but electric signs blink from every possible overhang. Stores are bright and busy, the sounds of women’s voices echoing into the street about the latest offerings at this bar, that ramen shop, and the gadget store next to it. People walk in the streets carrying handheld devices, dressed in modern clothes, and some men carry swords.

But what brings tears to my eyes are the animals — so many animals. Cats and dogs following people around. Monkeys in store windows. Foxes, squirrels, birds of every size and color. I glance down a street and swear I see a bear sitting beside a deer in an alley. Why don’t they just kill each other? One is predator and the other is prey, yet they’re comfortable around each other. Then a squealing herd of little rodent-like things runs by us.

“What are those?” I ask Arata, tugging on his sleeve.

“Guinea pigs.” He surveys the street around us and points. “These are raccoons. Mice, rabbits, and bats are common here too. Just watch and make sure you step around the piles of shit.” His booming laugh catches the attention of some store owners who smile up at us. Everyone seems friendly and their animals by their sides or on their shoulders talk to each other or their paired person.

We pass a clean-up crew on a motorized vehicle, the first I’ve seen on this world, disposing of the animal excrement. Apparently the animals here can be genetically engineered to communicate with humans and get along with each other but can’t be taught how to use a toilet. Somehow I’m not surprised.

The road we’re on is a straight-shot through the center of town. The tall pagoda I glimpsed from the gate is next to a large temple and a sumo wrestling stadium that takes up an entire city block. A new match is advertised on the billboard outside. I point at it with my eyebrows raised, and Jiro nods, calling to Sakai and gesturing towards the stadium. I’ve never been to a sumo wrestling match. That tradition died out during the wars. Who could afford to feed the competitors?

The city is bigger than I guessed from the sliver of wall I saw on the outside, about twice the size of Takayama with a more dense population. We make our way down a dozen different streets, and an hour later, we arrive at our destination. The Oda estate is marked by a hand-painted sign hung on a gated security entrance, a peaceful stretch of grounds nestled at the edge of the wall. A long lawn of grass and a cobbled stone walkway between rows of cherry trees stretches over a hill in the distance to a modern two-story, sprawling building.

We dismount from our horses at the gate. I hand Kagemusha’s reins to a waiting stablehand but pull my horse’s face down to mine. “Be good. Listen to these nice people, and eat, drink, and rest, okay?” Kagemusha nods his head and Kazuki, Jiro’s horse, the gift from Arata, butts his head into my back. “You too,” I command, laughing. “Both of you, be good.”

I rub my hand along Kagemusha’s hindquarters as he walks off with the other horses and turn straight into Oda’s guard.

“I thought you weren’t chipped.”

“I’m not. Shall we go now? Come, Kumo. Stay by me, okay?”

His eyes widen as he looks at the horses, my dog, and the procession of cats trotting towards us from the horse barn and the main house. At least a dozen cats of all shapes and sizes approach me.

“Here they come.” Jiro shakes his head and sighs. “Maybe Kumo should come with me.” He whistles and Kumo checks with me first before I nod, and he trots to Jiro’s side.

I squat down so the cats can surround me, and they meow in different tones, a ruckus so clamorous I have to shout to be heard. “Hey, hey, now. Keep it down. I can’t understand you anyway.” A skinny black cat leaps into my lap, so I clutch her to my chest and stand up. Her warm, fuzzy body stills in my arms before she begins to purr and rub her whiskers against my chest. “Listen to me,” I say, directing my voice down at the cats swirling about my legs, “you need to make a path or I’m going to step on somebody. So please disperse.”

Several cats move out of the way, but I keep the black cat in my arms as I rejoin everyone on the cobble stones leading to the house.

“Sanaa…” Kentaro jerks his head back towards the gate. Standing and sitting behind the bars are a horde of animals — deer, foxes, a bear, cats and dogs of every shape, size, and color, guinea pigs paw at the bottom of the threshold, and several birds perch on the top.

A chill douses my heart in apprehension, the warm cat welcome vaporizing in a flash. I hug my new friend to my chest. With this much attention always at my heels, my days of anonymity are over.

—-

Rai Oda is not what I was expecting. I’m used to these clan heads being intimidatingly large men with harsh stares and deep voices. Rai is short, barely taller than I am, and skinny with a meadow’s worth of dark hair swirling from his head in several different directions, a lion’s mane more than anything. A pair of wire glasses rest on the tip of his nose as he examines my tablet on all sides over dinner.

“Very interesting. Verrrrry…” he hums, turns on the device and off again after looking at the home screen. “Did you base your design off anything in particular?”

I recross my legs on the floor cushion, uneasy with being the main negotiator in this situation, but Rai insisted on dealing with me. Arata, Jiro, and Sakai are in the room only out of courtesy, and Rai’s daughter, Namika, sits behind her father, her bleached white hair seen over Rai’s shoulder as he handles my tablet.

“I know the engineers in Nishikyō based it off old tech from Japan before the wars. Only a few survived the wars and then The Decline.” I shrug my shoulders. “Honestly, most of what we made was built from scratch. We lost a thousand years of history and getting it back was an exercise in futility.”

Rai hands my tablet to me, and I set it aside. The battery is at thirty percent again, and if I don’t get a charge soon, my means of communication will severely diminish.

“And you have starships, too?” Rai rubs his bony hands together, his eyes growing to twice their size in his skinny head.

“We will in a year. The ships that brought us had to return to Earth to be upgraded and bring more Nishikyō citizens. The next wave is due in about three hundred days more or less. They will leave a two ship contingent in orbit with shuttles.”

“Why not keep your first ships here?” he asks, his keen gaze drilling down into my brain.

“We need every available ship to get people off Earth. It was decided that the first wave of settlers would determine if this planet was habitable enough to stay, using a one-year time window. If the conditions planet side were too harsh and too many settlers were lost, we would move on to an alternate planet, but only as a worst-case scenario. We were going to do our best to make it work the first time around, but it wasn’t beyond our planning to colonize an entire solar system if more planets were available. I would have to check with Lucy about the exact coordinates of our backup planet and solar system.”

“Is that so?” Rai strokes at the stubble on his chin and gazes out the window at his lawn and the wall looming off in the distance.

“The human race was at a stand-still in Nishikyō. We had been in zero population mode for a hundred years before colonization began. We hoped to lift the child-limit ban and let nature do its work.” My hand glides to my belly on instinct before I can stop it. I’m not pregnant anymore, and the pain of loss rips through me as if the miscarriage were yesterday. I clear my throat and sip on tea but the pause is not enough to cover my obvious discomfort.

“You seem tired,” Rai says, gesturing to his daughter. “Namika, go speak with your mother about accommodations for our guests tonight. You had about a dozen people with you and horses?”

“And my dog. But please, wait. There’s more we should discuss before we retire.”

Namika rises anyway and sweeps past us to the door. “I’ll be back then.” She slides open a shōji door and sitting outside are six cats and my dog. I burst into a laugh at Kumo, lying on the floor with an orange cat sleeping on top of him.

“What’s going on out here?” Namika chides, her hands on her hips. “This isn’t a circus.” A cat meows at her and Namika’s head tilts. “Really?” Three more cats chime in, and Kumo howls low, a bray more than a bark. Namika closes the door on the animals and returns to the seat behind her father.

“You’ll never guess who they think she is.”

“Please just tell me. You know I don’t understand Cat.”

Namika points her finger at me, and my face bursts into a hot blush. “They say she’s royalty, and every animal in the kingdom is waiting to talk to her.”

Outed by animals.

“Yes,” I whisper through a nervous giggle and clear my throat again. “I was going to get to that next. Not only are we not from Orihime, and we came from Earth with starships and technology, but my greatest grandfather was the last reigning emperor of Japan.”

Both Rai and Namika sit absolutely still, but a grin blossoms on Namika’s face first. She punches her father in the shoulder and startles him out of his stunned silence. “Hear that, Papa? We should chip her. Can you imagine? She’d be better than the best interpreter.”

“I’ll admit that I’ve come for the chip. We’re willing to trade, and we’re hoping that, with your support, we can overthrow Fujiwara.”

Rai rises swiftly from his seat, looking between me, the door, and the outside. “It can’t be done. It can’t. For the love of all the gods, why didn’t you come ten years ago?”